Ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability

Authors:
Reig‐Martínez, Ernest
Gómez‐Limón, José A.
Picazo‐Tadeo, Andrés J.
Type: Journal Article
Year of publication: 2011
Source: USDA
Collected from: AGRIS
Subject:
cooperatives
agricultural policies
policies
farms
farmers
Description:The assessment of sustainability at farm level has been growing in popularity over the last few years. This article contributes to this line of research by building up composite indicators for different facets—social, economic, environmental, and global—of farm sustainability using a methodological approach that combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods, and assigns common weights to each individual sustainability indicator. This approach is applied to a database of 163 farms located in the Campos County, a region belonging to the dry lands of the Spanish Northern Plateau, using 12 individual indicators of sustainability. Our findings show that both economic and environmental composite sustainability indicators are positively correlated, but that this is not the case for the social indicator. We also check the influence of a set of variables on farm sustainability using bootstrapping statistical techniques, and showing that increasing farm size, membership in agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ medium and upper agricultural‐specific technical education, all exert a significant positive influence on sustainability. These results provide clues for policy makers that intend to design sustainability‐increasing structural agricultural policies.
 

Related Resources

Support for Farmers' Cooperative - Sector Report WINE

Provider: 
Subject: 
products
agricultural products
policies
agricultural policies
agricultural development
agricultural economics
cooperatives
agribusiness and cooperatives
farms
cooperative farming

“Agric[Part I: New Development of Agricultural Cooperatives: Theory and Evidence]: Agricultural Cooperatives.

Provider: 
Subject: 
policies
agricultural policies
economics
agricultural economics
cooperatives
agribusiness and cooperatives

Stakeholder Participation in Co-operative Capital in Western Agricultural Co-operatives

Provider: 
Subject: 
policies
agricultural policies
agricultural development
cooperatives
agribusiness and cooperatives

Farm support policies that minimize global distortionary effects: a synthesis

Provider: 
Subject: 
policies
farmers
agricultural policies
Collected from: 

Distributional effects of agricultural cooperatives in China: Exclusion of smallholders and potential gains on participation

Provider: 
Subject: 
farms
farmers
cooperatives
Collected from: 

Understanding how farmers last over the long term: a typology of trajectories of change in farming systems. A French case-study

Provider: 
Subject: 
agricultural products
products
farms
agriculture
farmers
farming systems
Collected from: 

AGRERI Library

Support for Farmers' Cooperative - Sector Report WINE

Provider: 
Subject: 
products
agricultural products
policies
agricultural policies
agricultural development
agricultural economics
cooperatives
agribusiness and cooperatives
farms
cooperative farming

“Agric[Part I: New Development of Agricultural Cooperatives: Theory and Evidence]: Agricultural Cooperatives.

Provider: 
Subject: 
policies
agricultural policies
economics
agricultural economics
cooperatives
agribusiness and cooperatives

Stakeholder Participation in Co-operative Capital in Western Agricultural Co-operatives

Provider: 
Subject: 
policies
agricultural policies
agricultural development
cooperatives
agribusiness and cooperatives

External Library

Farm support policies that minimize global distortionary effects: a synthesis

Provider: 
Subject: 
policies
farmers
agricultural policies
Collected from: 

Distributional effects of agricultural cooperatives in China: Exclusion of smallholders and potential gains on participation

Provider: 
Subject: 
farms
farmers
cooperatives
Collected from: 

Understanding how farmers last over the long term: a typology of trajectories of change in farming systems. A French case-study

Provider: 
Subject: 
agricultural products
products
farms
agriculture
farmers
farming systems
Collected from: